To the Editor:
Much attention is given to the role of Martin Luther King Jr. in the March on Washington 50 years ago. As a teenager at the time, I remember to this day sitting on my family's living room floor watching the event on our black and white TV screen, and like most people feeling moved by King's rousing and inspiring speech.
However, in the years since, I have studied the details of the march and the history of the civil rights movement and have come to appreciate another very important figure present at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, someone whose name is hardly ever mentioned today: That person was A. Philip Randolph.
The first speaker that day, Randolph was the principal organizer and the national director of the 1963 March. [His close associate in this endeavor was Bayard Rustin] Randolph was recognized by his fellow Black leaders, including King, as the elder statesman of their movement. In this regard, he represented the generation that preceded King, Lewis and the others.
In fact, some of the contend of King's famous address reflected Randolph's long-standing philosophy on civil rights matters. The integration of the races in pursuit of a common American dream, as King expressed this, has antecedents in Randolph's ideas going back to the 1930s.
Randolph is best known by many for his creation of the first majority Black labor union --the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. His organizing efforts for this started in the mid-1920s, culminating successfully in 1935. His next major venture was to push for black-white unity in the big national unions, especially the AFof L.
Randolph felt that the movement for social justice is not independent of the movement for cross-racial social and economic reform. The integration of the working class, in his mind, is the keystone of fundamental progress in America.
Nevertheless, Randolph's major devotion was to fight for Black American rights, since this segment of the population lagged so far behind whites in socio-economic spheres. He started organizing Black workers as far back as the 1910s, and by 1940 he was recognized as the most widely known spokesman for the Black working class. In 1937 Fiorello La Guardia called him "one of the foremost progressive labor leaders in America."
Another reason why Randolph was chosen to lead the March on Washington in 1963 was that he instigated the idea for a march on the capital in 1941. Before the USA entered the war against Germany and Japan, the nation started to expand its defense industry. But Blacks were not allowed any meaningful participation, as the jobs were almost entirely given to Whites. Randolph conceived the idea of a massive non-violent protest directed at the federal administration and Congress. Despite FDR's urging against this march, Randolph refused to call it off. FDR relented and issued an executive order to ban defense industry discrimination.
After the war, in 1948, Randolph successfully pressured President Truman to issue an executive order to end segregation in the armed services. In 1957 Randolph organized a Prayer Pilgrimage to Washington, and in the following two years he fostered a Youth Movement for integrated schools. In 1966 he sponsored a Freedom Budget for economic justice for all races. By this time, Randolph was passing the torch to the new generation of civil rights leaders, and he died in the following decade. He was truly a hero for all America and deserves the nation's attention on this 50th anniversary of the March on Washington.